August Ansel - The Attic

By Tuli, c. 2052.

An after-reckoning about how it shook out.

Supposition, hypothetical, considering everything, etc.

What happened?

This is how we create a history, as passed from lip to ear. The birth of rumor, legend, long nights around a fire while the moon rises and the log burns to embers.

The quickest way to spread information: telegraph, telephone, tell a secret.

The world came apart.

That may not be true. It may only have been the country. Or the continent.

The cavalry did not arrive. No assistance was forthcoming. Perhaps that means something?

I doubt it.

For a long time the disintegration was recorded. Data was downloaded and consumed. The unraveling was spectator sport.

There was probably a tipping point. One last margin of error, a hair’s breadth, a held breath, right before the moment of no return, an accumulation of trouble, enough to make us stand still, to look around at each other and say we should change this .

That is not what happened.

Who did this, damn it?

Finding a Responsible Party was more important than standing down.

We already knew we were responsible.

For a time, we knew everything, had all the information.

That is not true, either, but we thought it was.

I search, therefore I am .

Once upon a time, a hole opened in the great web of connection. The filaments broke loose. The old forgotten quiet poured through.

What happened?

History is what we remember. Real-story is what we forget.

I can only write a history. But for you it may be a real-story.

I will write.

Not today. My hand fails.

Let us begin with a reminder: Carpent tua poma nepotes.

Your descendants will pick your fruit.

SOMEONE WAS INSIDE. All the way inside, pushing past the overturned furniture and trash she had scattered strategically around the entryway and the living room. Bear , was Arie’s first thought. It had happened before. But there was a quality of hurried stealth. No bear would try to step around the bottles and cans, the old cellophane and silverware, broken glass and dead leaves. Lying face down on the attic floorboards, weight on her forearms, not moving a muscle except to turn her head ever so slowly, Arie hovered, put her ear as close to the slats of the old heating register as she dared. Panting down there, broken and whistling. A person, then. A person in the house with her. Someone frightened. Arie could smell it, without even putting her nose to the grate. The sour, dank odor of a body in extremity, familiar to her as a rat’s nest or a string of possum shit.

“Please don’t.” The words floated into Arie’s ear, a scrim of sound so high and wheezy it seemed like her imagination. No longer directly below her. The sound now drifted up from around the corner, in what had been a kitchen. “Hurry. Have to hurry.” Female, probably. Or child. Arie knew better than to look.

Then something else inside, down there. Quick and scrabbling, not minding the debris, claws loud on the wood of the floor, despite its soft and patchy rot. The whistling breath of the intruder, the human, had gone silent. But the fear smell was loud and louder still. The clawed thing panted and snuffled directly under the grate. Arie held her breath until it passed under, following its prey. The sky panel was open above her, had been all day, and the cool smell of evening fell through. Her mandala was visible in the late twilight, a circular labyrinth etched into the attic wall, its path dark where her finger had traced again and again. Lying on the attic floor, silent, she followed the spiraling line with her eyes, outside to inside. Slow breath in, slow breath out.

The growl below became an open-throated snarl. There commenced a great crashing and floundering, things thrown, something heavy cutting the air with a quiet whoosh, a squall of pain or surprise. Arie’s eyes moved through the mandala, now from the center back to the outside. While the animal’s clawed feet tried to gain traction in the debris on the floor, the human made a break for the front door. She made it outside, sobbing. Arie heard and felt the door hit its frame when the intruder tried to pull it shut. But the latch mechanism was long gone, knob utterly useless. The animal slammed against the door on the inside, raging, clawing, biting, effectively keeping it closed for a few extra moments. The woman fled, her footsteps fading in the direction of the gulch. Down in the entryway, the animal commenced a deliberate, clatterous digging.

Arie rose to hands and knees, waited. The instant the scratching ceased, she leapt to her feet. The ladder leaned against the edge of the sky panel. She scurried up two rungs and poked her head and shoulders through the opening in the attic roof, just in time to see the dog racing into the tree line at the bottom of the cracked asphalt cul-de-sac. Dog, not wolf this time. The legs were bulky and not long enough for wolf, tail not a wolf’s heavy brush, but a bald knob, hacked off by a human in the time before the Pink. Presently, two voices rose—the woman’s first, pitching upward until it splintered in some high register. Then on top of it the dog’s bay, smooth and delighted. An immediate response came from all around, a multitude rejoicing. Dozens of canid howls. Scores, perhaps.

Arie stepped off the ladder and laid it lengthwise against the wall, pulled the guy rope out of its spring cleat and paid the cable through her hands until the sky panel dropped solidly into place. She shot the flat bolts through their brackets. The animal singing continued, but was muted now, fading as each voice dropped out of the chorus. The attic was entirely dark. She took a lighter from her apron pocket and lit her way to the work table, set the flame to a stub of candle.

A single shriek somewhere near the river, then silence.

At the basin, she dipped her hands, dipped them again, laving the water up and through her fingers. “Rest is not mine to give,” she said. “My life is my own.” She put her wet palms against her cheeks, smoothed them back and over the crown of her head. Her silver hair darkened where her wet hands touched. It was the middle of fall by her reckoning. Despite weeks of warm days a chill came at night, one she now felt on her damp skin.

Normally she ate a little something before sleeping, some dried berries and jerky, perhaps a carrot or chunk of flatbread, but she had no appetite. She opened the bedroll and got ready for the night, slingshot tucked into the ammo bag at her right hand, short spear under her pillow. She double-checked the sky panel bolt, peed into the compost bucket. Finally, she stood before the mandala and kissed the null signs etched on her inner forearms. She touched her finger to the outside of the labyrinth and began to trace the smooth rut, back and forth, inward, outward, eyes closed, her breathing slow and rhythmic. Eight times her finger traveled to the center and out again. On the ninth and final circuit, she recited her full catechism.